SKUNKED!

Yup! You guessed it - Anni got sprayed last night! Ugh! We were letting her out before heading to bed, and I noticed her sneeze when she came inside (yes, INSIDE!). Then the stench hit like a brick. Luckily, she didn't make it onto any carpeting before I sent her right back outside, but the smell is still lingering despite multiple floor washings, disposal of area rugs, and open windows throughout the house. We bathed her last night, but the boys and I are going to bathe her a few more times today. Fun, fun, fun....

Problem Solving

My husband cracks me up. I find his quirky sense of humor funny in general, but I also find some of the things he does extremely amusing. He is by nature a problem-solver. Some of you know. The house was too small - add 800 square feet! He was tripping over the shoes in the entryway - add on to the front of the house to make a shoe closet! Not enough pantry space? Build another one! You get the idea. So... the cherry problem. We have several, BIG, TALL, beautiful cherry trees that are always loaded with delicious cherries that he longs to pick. Every year, he pulls down the bottom branches and picks as many as he can reach. This year, he came up with a better solution - the cherry-picker van!

Problem Solved!

(However, I think that he's really just picking the same branches that he picked a few years ago!)

Summer Reading

Another perk of homeschooling is extra "osmosis" learning. Neil-Te has been learning to read all year - practicing sight words, phonics... About a month ago, KiKi started begging to learn a letter every day. He learns his letter, practices writing it, then begs for a new one. The other day, He picked up this library book, What I See, and started to read it. It is one of those early reader books - highly repetitive; and I figured that he had just memorized it. You can just imagine my shock when he actually stopped here and there to sound out the words! Guess I had underestimated the power of osmosis!